Missing Ruxton woman's marriage was troubled

Estranged couple had accused each other of abuse

By Michael Ollove
and Dan Thanh Dang
Sun Staff Writers

   Susan Hurley Harrison disappeared two weeks ago from what was, in many ways, an enviable life.
   She had affluence. She had the adoration of two accomplished sons. She had the satisfaction of starting a business. She had the weekly tennis game with her girlfriends.
   She also had an acrimonious marriage.
   For years, she complained to police officers and to judges that her husband. James J. Harrison Jr., was beating her. Mr. Harrison, 57, once the chief financial officer of McCormick & Co., countered that his wife, suffering from mental illness, was the abusive one.
   Whoever was right the relationship was wrong.
   "They are" said Mary D. Harrison, Mr. Harrison’s first wife, "the worst things that ever happened to each other."
   Now Susan Hurley Harrison is missing, and Mr. Harrison is the last person known to have seen her. He acknowledges that they had a troubled marriage and that they fought that last day. "I hope that she’s gone somewhere," he said. "I'm really worried."
   The rest of Mrs. Harrison’s family and her friends look at the fragmentary evidence surrounding her disappearance and cannot ward off ominous interpretations.
   "Everyone that knows her — and this includes her attorney, her psychiatrist, her children, her ex-husband, all of her siblings and every friend that we've contacted is very concerned for her safety and thinks something bad has happened to her," her older brother, William Hurley, said from Boston last week. "It is completely unlike her to do anything like this."
   When she disappeared Aug. 5, Mrs. Harrison, 52, of Ruxton was only hours away from a flight to Boston with her 19-year-old son, Nicholas Owsley, to see her three brothers.
   "The idea of spending four days with my brother was as close to a perfect scenario as she could imagine," said John Owsley, her older son, who was to begin classes at Cornell University's School of Law this month.
   At the time his mother vanished, John, 23, was one week away from his return home after a summer trip through Europe. Mrs. Harrison couldn’t contain her excitement about the coming reunion.
   No one can imagine her missing either the Boston trip or the reunion with John.
   "Those sons are first in her life," said Janet Baldwin, a long-time friend.
   Now those Sons are driving around searching for their mothers green Saab convertible and flashing her picture at convenience stores. Last week, the two sons and Mr. Harrison’s four siblings offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any individuals responsible for her disappearance. Baltimore County Police said last night that they had no information on her whereabouts.
   "I am facing the real possibility of never finding out what happened my mother," John Owsley said.
   Susan Hurley grew up in comfort in Taunton, Mass., the second of five children to a Roman Catholic family. Her father was vice president of a silverware manufacturer and her mother was a homemaker. After college and jobs with a Boston art museum and a publishing house. She married Tom Owsley, a college buddy of one of her brothers.
   The couple lived for a time in Connecticut and Virginia before settling in Garrison about 12 years ago. Mr. Owsley is a vice resident with Crown Central Petroleum Corp.

Supportive wife and mother
   She threw herself into the role of supportive wife to a corporate husband and then the two boys came along, of a fully involved mother. She was a docent at the Baltimore Museum of Art, volunteered at the Gilman School and satisfied her artistic earnings through sewing, knitting and the creation of hand-painted lamp shades.
   It was an idyllic life, but, apparently not fully satisfying one. After 20 years the Owsley marriage foundered In the early 1980s. Lack of communication, she told friends. She also had a new romance.
   James Harrison Jr. then was completing a 20-year climb to the top ranks of McCormick & Co. A graduate of Gilman, Cornell University and the University of Baltimore Law School, he was married and the father six.
   She had met him through her husband’s professional associations. "They used to go it as couples," said Mary Jo Gordon, a close friend and former neighbor. "He [James] flirted with her, pursued her while she was married for two years."
   The Owsleys separated in 1984 and divorced three years later. On Dec. 2, 1988, she married Mr. Harrison.
   She married him, friends say, even though she was complaining of him hitting her.
   "I wouldn’t come to the wedding because of that," said Terry MacMillan, who has been one of Mrs. Harrison's closest friends from their years at Dana Hall Preparatory School.
   Ms. MacMillan, who lives in California, said that after an altercation between the couple at a San Francisco hotel in the mid-1980s, Susan spent the night with her. Although Susan called police, she refused to prosecute Mr. Harrison, said Ms. MacMillan. It was a pattern she repeated.

Reports of battery
   The Harrison marriage is well-chronicled: official records. Beginning at least as far back as October 1989 and continuing to within five days of Mrs. Harrison’s disappearance, Baltimore County police received no fewer than 20 calls about domestic battery involving the Harrisons, who lived in a secluded, tree-shrouded home in Luthervllle. In a number of cases, one or both of them appeared to have been drinking. Sometimes there were accusations of infidelity.
   Mrs. Harrison accused her husband of hitting, slapping or throwing her to the ground.
   Her reports to the officers had a numbing repetitiveness.
   11/28/91. Mrs. Harrison stated that her husband pulled her hair and struck her in back with his hands. Mrs. Harrison showed this officer a red mark on her back on right side.
   4/26/92. Susan Harrison, wife of defendant, stated that defendant threw her down the steps, from second floor, causing an abrasion to her left knee.
   2/16/93. I met with Mrs. Susan Harrison who stated...that suspect held her against her will…. During the time she was locked in the room he periodically entered and threw water, urine and soda on victim Harrison.
   Last Christmas, she unsuccessfully appealed to a Baltimore County judge for a restraining order against Mr. Harrison [several months earlier, a judge did issue a temporary restraining order] claiming he "through [sic] me into the Christmas tree — broke my ribs, gave me several lacerations and bruises to my body. He held me captive for 10 hours and finally got naked to rape me and I escaped to a friend’s house."
   On four occasions, Mr. Harrison was charged with battery. In three of those cases, the charges were dropped. In the fourth, he was acquitted. On most occasions, Mrs. Harrison refused to press charges, according to friends.
   John Owsley refused to discuss his mother's marriage to Mr. Harrison. "I have extremely strong beliefs about it, but I can't talk about it," he said.
   But friends express little doubt that Mr. Harrison frequently had struck his wife.
   "I've seen her with her face a mess, blackened eye and so forth," said Mr. Hurley, her brother.
   "Her face once, it was black and blue under her eyes" said Mary Jo Gordon a friend. He broke her wrist once, her ribs another time.
   Mrs. Harrison did not suffer in silence. She told her friends about the abuse and, on occasion, took refuge in their homes. For years, her friends counseled Mrs. Harrison leave her husband.
   "It was so often that she called that I told her the details don’t matter. You sound like a broken record." Ms. MacMillan said. "And then I’d sound like a broken record."

Husband says he was abused
   Mr. Harrison, who retired from McCormick in 1991, has offered a vastly different version of his marital life, claiming to police that he was the victim of his wife’s assaults, he attributed her behavior either to alcohol or to a "manic depressive" condition and her refusal to take lithium. In December, he tried unsuccessfully to force her to submit to psychiatric evaluation.
   "When she’s good, she’s so good," Mr. Harrison said, "but on the bad side she’s tough, she just attacks verbally, my family, me.
   Mary D. Harrison, who was married to Mr. Harrison for 31 years, supports her former husband's account. She said Mr. Harrison was never abusive toward her and insisted that Susan Harrison, suffering from a mental illness, was the one who was physically abusive.
   "She does not tell the truth," said Mary Harrison. "I'm not sure she knows the truth, but she plays the victim very, very well."
   What the two shared, those on both sides agree, was a nearly irresistible attraction for each other.
   Susan Harrison’s friends can’t conceive of her physically confronting her husband and insist he told police she abused him only to protect himself. Often, the police summoned to the house chose not to charge either one, apparently unsure whom to believe.
   Once, though, Mr. Harrison showed an officer a bruise that he said was the result of his wife stamping on his foot. Mrs. Harrison countered that his doctor had caused the bruise during a rough examination, which the doctor confirmed. The officer charged later Harrison with making a false statement.
   Mrs. Harrison’s family and friends dispute Mr. Harrison’s claim that she is mentally ill. In the mid-1980s, they say, she saw an internist in Boston who diagnosed her as manic-depressive and prescribed lithium. However, they say, she saw a psychiatrist in Baltimore who insisted the diagnosis was wrong.
   "She was told, and I was told directly by her current doctor that she is not a manic-depressive," Mr. Hurley said.
   In December, after two days of fights that brought police to their home three times, Mrs. Harrison moved out. Eventually settling in a Ruxton cottage.
   After separating from her husband, she opened a business in Mill Centre to sell the type of lamp shades she had made for years as a hobby. She called her store The Shady Lady.
   Friends saw positive changes In her after her separation. "She was spunky again for the first time in years," Ms. Gordon said.
   But Mrs. Harrison did not stay away from her husband. Kenneth N. Gelbard, an owner of Mill Centre, said Mr. Harrison was helpful getting The Shady Lady off the ground.
   He helped her negotiate the lease in the beginning of the year." Mr. Gelbard said. ‘They seemed very comfortable working together. There was no sense of acrimony there."
   But the fighting was not over. On July 12, Mr. Harrison complained to police that his wife tried to run him over outside his house.
   Then, on July 31, Mrs. Harrison called police, saying that her husband had come to her house and, when she refused to go to dinner, grabbed her hand and twisted her fingers.
   Her friends watched with alarm as Mrs. Harrison began seeing her husband with more frequency. ‘The last thing I said to her." Ms. MacMillan said, "was be careful."

Last seen at husband’s home
   Mrs. Harrison and son Nick, a sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont, had planned to drive to Boston that Friday, Aug. 5. But alter failing to get an early start, it occurred to them that they might be able to get cheap airline tickets to Boston. They made reservations for a 7:10 a.m. flight the next day.
   Nicholas, who was living with his father, Tom Owsley, in Homeland, decided to spend the night with his mother to save time in the morning. About 5 p.m., he decided to go to his father’s house to pack and to pick up dinner on his way back.
   Looking in her wallet for money to give Nick to pay for Chinese food, Mrs. Harrison realized she only had about $5. So she gave him her automated teller machine card and told him to make a withdrawal. As Nick left, Mrs. Harrison told him she planned to take a nap and asked him to wake her when he returned.
   After Nick’s departure, Mrs. Harrison got in her Saab and drove the six miles to Mr. Harrison’s house. Mr. Harrison said he did not remember the time she arrived. He said she was at his house several times that day. At least one neighbor saw her car at the house that evening. One of Mr. Harrison's daughters told police that as she was leaving the house, she saw Mrs. Harrison arrive.
   Mr. Harrison acknowledges that the couple argued that day and suggested that she was not stable. "It was a tough day," he said.
   He told police that as the evening wore on, he went upstairs to bed, leaving Mrs. Harrison downstairs. He said he heard a car leave about 10 p.m. and assumed it was her.
   Meanwhile, Nick had returned to his mother’s house after 8 p.m. to find her absent, the front door slightly ajar and all the lights in the house off. Inside, he found Mrs. Harrison’s pocketbook, which contained all of her credit cards. [NOTE: THIS IS NOT ACCURATE. HER CREDIT CARDS WERE ALL IN HER WALLET, WHICH SHE HAD WITH HER.]
   Worried by his mother’s continued absence, he called his father at 11 p.m., then again shortly after 2 a.m. After the second call, he drove to his father’s house.
   Mr. Owsley said Nick drove by Mr. Harrison’s house in the morning but didn’t see Mrs. Harrison’s car. Mr. Hurley called Mr. Harrison between 9:30 a.m. and l0 a.m. but got the answering machine
   At 2 p.m. Saturday, Tom Owsley contacted the Baltimore County police. A happy ending seems less and less likely, family and friends fear.
   "She would not choose to vanish off the of the earth," said Mrs. Baldwin.